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Revelations of Divine Love
'' Revelations of Divine love'' was written in the later part of the 14th C. by Julian of Norwich and is the first book published in English and written by a woman. It is organized around 16 revelations, or "showings" as Julian called them, which she received from God. All but the last came during one five-hour period from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on May 8, 1373, when she was extremely ill and believed herself to be dying. The illness and revelations came as an answer to an earlier threefold prayer, in which she had asked to more fully understand the passion of Christ, to suffer physically, and to be given three "wounds": contrition, compassion, and longing for God. SOME QUTATIONS OF Revelations of Divine love: ONE: This is a Revelation of Love that Jesus Christ, our endless bliss, made in Sixteen Shewings, or Revelations particular. TWO: These Revelations were shewed to a simple creature unlettered, the year of our Lord 1373, the Thirteenth day of May.' 'THREE: When I was thirty years old and a half, God sent me a bodily sickness, in which I lay three days and three nights; and on the fourth night I took all my rites of Holy Church, and weened not to have lived till day. 'FOUR: Suddenly I saw the red blood trickle down from under the Garland hot and freshly and right plenteously, as it were in the time of His Passion when the Garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head who was both God and Man, the same that suffered thus for me. I conceived truly and mightily that it was Himself shewed it me, without any mean. ''FIVE: ''' '''I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us: He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth us, and all encloseth us for tender love, that He may never leave us; being to us all-thing that is good, as to mine understanding.'' SIX: ''' Our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it overpasseth the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loveth us. '''SEVEN: This Shewing was quick and life-like, and horrifying and dreadful, sweet and lovely. 'EIGHT: 'He that made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end. '' NINE: ''Because of the Shewing I am not good but if I love God the better: and in as much as ye love God the better, it is more to you than to me. 'TEN: '''God willeth to be seen and to be sought: to be abided and to be trusted. '' 'It is God’s will that we have three things in our seeking: — The first is that we seek earnestly and diligently, without sloth, and, as it may be through His grace, without unreasonable heaviness and vain sorrow. ''''ELEVEN: 'Here I saw verily that sin is no deed: for in all this was not sin shewed. And I would no longer marvel in this, but beheld our Lord, what He would shew. And thus, as much as it might be for the time, the rightfulness of God’s working was shewed to the soul. TWELVE: After this I saw, beholding, the body plenteously bleeding in seeming of the Scourging, as thus: — The fair skin was broken full deep into the tender flesh with sharp smiting all about the sweet body. THIRTEEN: 'In God there may be no wrath, as to my sight: for our good Lord endlessly hath regard to His own worship and to the profit of all that shall be saved. FOURTEEN: ''' '''The age of every man shall be acknowledged before him in Heaven, and every man shall be rewarded for his willing service and for his time. 'FIFTEEN: It is God’s will that we hold us in comfort with all our might: for bliss is lasting without end, and pain is passing and shall be brought to nought for them that shall be saved. And therefore it is not God’s will that we follow the feelings of pain in sorrow and mourning for them, but that we suddenly pass over, and hold us in endless enjoyment. Source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich